A few thin vapors clung
in the coves of the forest or lay along the winding course of the
river. The scene disengaged a surprising effect of stillness, which
was hardly interrupted when the cocks began once more to crow among
the steadings[11]. Perhaps the same fellow who had made so horrid a
clangor in the darkness not half an hour before, now sent up the
merriest cheer to greet the coming day. A little wind went bustling
and eddying among the tree-tops underneath the windows. And still the
daylight kept flooding insensibly out of the east, which was soon to
grow incandescent and cast up that red-hot cannon-ball, the rising
sun.
Denis looked out over all this with a bit of a shiver. He had taken
her hand, and retained it in his almost unconsciously.
"Has the day begun already?" she said; and then illogically enough:
"the night has been so long! Alas! what shall we say to my uncle when
he returns?"
"What you will," said Denis, and he pressed her fingers in his.
She was silent.
"Blanche," he said, with a swift, uncertain, passionate utterance,
"you have seen whether I fear death. You must know well enough that I
would as gladly leap out of that window into the empty air as to lay a
finger on you without your free and full consent. But if you care for
me at all do not let me lose my life in a misapprehension; for I love
you better than the whole world; and though I will die for you
blithely, it would be like all the joys of Paradise to live on and
spend my life in your service.
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